


A Place for the Valiant Dead

by Margaret_Armstrong



Series: Roommates [1]
Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Gen, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-06
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-31 17:39:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6480232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margaret_Armstrong/pseuds/Margaret_Armstrong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When hiding from authority in a strange place (with a strange girl), a guy's best friend is his giant war robot.</p>
<p>Some adjustment may be necessary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Place for the Valiant Dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [felspar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/felspar/gifts).



> Because she listened to my babbling.
> 
> Author’s Note & Disclaimer: I own none of these characters. Obviously.
> 
> To all those GW fans out there reading what I’m writing, thank you. I've got a bunch of little ficlets floating in my brain (along with an epic that happens later down the mental timeline), so why not share them? I write these drabbles mostly to please myself and get them out of my head, but it’s nice to know there are other sci-fi fans who enjoy what I do. And yes, though Gundam Wing is a show tailor-made for pairings (and boy do I have a ship sailing here!), I consider this story to be, at its bones, a sci-fi character study of two teenagers in an extremely unlikely living condition with many opportunities for amusement. My main goal here is to explore the relationship between Duo and Hilde rather than force a romance. In my brain, I see those two as friends and comrades first, and that relationship alone is just adorable to watch.
> 
> Plus, Hilde is my GIRL. I’m afraid I might torture her a little bit because I like her so much, but we always hurt the ones we love, don’t we?
> 
> I also intend to do my best to keep the culture smash of a futuristic space-America (L2 forever!) alive in this ficlet series. Please bear with me if I apply foreign languages injudiciously or incorrectly describe a cultural reality. All the different things human beings do add such richness to the world, and I want to touch on as much of it as possible. Original characters run rampant here, adding flavor and cannon fodder. I’m also imagining a society two hundred years in the future and thousands of miles away from Earth, so our reality vs. their reality is going to be as wildly different as England’s experience of the Revolutionary War period is to us. For instance, two hundred years is plenty of time for many, many things to be legalized, such as… cannabis. We’ve already got gay marriage down, so I am going to assume that two hundred years of social evolution means that homophobia is considered passe. Hey, in a world where the polar ice caps canonically melted and ALL OF EARTH spent two hundred years fighting itself, I’m throwing some utopia into the dystopia.
> 
> If I mention it here, it’s probably going to show up in the fanfic. Please consider yourself warned.
> 
> The timeline I use comes from the painstaking work published on aboutgundamwing as well as my own constant re-watchings of the sub version, plus the GW Technical Manual and Episode Zero manga released in English in 2002. If I missed something, I do apologize to the sticklers out there.
> 
> To all who choose to read: Please enjoy this little ficlet excerpt from “Roommates.”
> 
> "Ojiji" - slangy Japanese for "old man"  
> "Herrlich" - German equivalent to "Handsome/Sexy"

_\-----_

 

_“Duo Maxwell, the great Shinigami-sama, please allow me to introduce you to Hilde Schbeiker, Valkyrie. You two seem to be in the same line of business.”_

_Not exactly, Ojiji._

Duo tapped Deathscythe’s chassis with a hammer, searching for weak spots in the armor. Only 70% complete. They needed at least 1.6 more metric tons of Gundanium to do the job properly, and Hilde was busting her ass trying to get materials in through Sweeper routes that wouldn’t raise any alarm bells since his face was so well known in the colonies by now just stepping outside without a disguise could land him thirty death threats and one recruitment offer from a nutjob terrorist outfit. Fortunately he specialized in subterfuge, so he hadn’t gone completely stir crazy yet, but this was by far the most _personal_ safe house Howard had ever set up.

The thought of OZ painting a big red target on Hilde’s home made him physically sick.

Uli Solvig and his wife Kvista had been kind, he remembered that. Remembered _them_.

They’d been first generation colonists from the initial waves that had actually built the colonies from the asteroids up.

First generation _Sweepers_ , if it came to that.

Kvista with her yellow braids steeling to gray and a face full of smile lines would float in through the airlock, prime scrap and a bag of food in tow, always with something special for “the kid.” She didn’t come often, but when she did, wow. The food was amazing. Plus, the smelted scrap meant Deathscythe had brand new parts for weeks. Uli, on the other hand, spent months on the Sweeper ship working on Deathscythe, quietly singing classic rock songs in the growing mech’s honor. It had been Uli who had not-so-carelessly left a collection of said music where an enterprising young man could hide such contraband from Professor G’s random inspections. And Uli had been one of the Sweeper mechanics responsible for showing Deathscythe’s future pilot the proper methods of care for such an impressive piece of machinery. Hell, now that Duo was looking for it, he could see Uli’s handiwork everywhere here: the workshop, the hangar, the house.

Especially the house.

The hydroponics alone were a labor of love that probably had a cook like Kvista chopping contentedly for hours. Solar panels handled most of the power requirements for the living quarters with very little energy loss. The water filtration system for the shower was even more impressive, and if only dismantling the pipes wouldn’t leave the place water-less, Duo would take it all apart just to see how Uli had done it. They must have custom built the house themselves over decades, addressing each little comfort as it came.

That they’d given all of this to the one L2 colonist left who didn’t think he was absolute shit was ironic enough to make him believe in God.

Hilde.

Duo had thought she was dead. Execution for treason would have been just OZ’s style. So he’d waited there in the lunar base cell in the hollow hours, trying to commit her to memory. Her anger. Her defiance. Her refusal to be just another swipe of Shinigami’s endless blade.

Being trapped in there with the shining beacon of cheery optimism that was Chang Wufei had been the absolute cherry on the proverbial shit sundae.

Seeing her alive had been worse than shocking. With the return of one life came the devastating hope:

_Maybe they’re all still alive._

That, of course, had been a lie. He’d seen the bodies. Buried most of them.

Learning from Hilde the old Sweepers had died while he was raining down death and destruction on Earth, _peacefully in their fucking sleep_ , didn’t assuage his guilt at all. He should have felt the curse reaching out somehow. He should have known. More importantly, he should have picked up on the fact that his favorite married couple had a fucking kid. Ancient as they were, they made a point never to be away from home at the same time, which struck Duo as odd since they were obviously fond of each other and the constant tag-teaming looked exhausting, but now made perfect sense. There was a little girl in this house they’d built together, waiting for them to come home.

Until they died here, touched by Shinigami.

So she packed up the memory of their lives and walked into a war, ready to chase down death.

_Caught me twice, too._ He quirked a smile, pausing to toss his braid over one shoulder. _Let me go the second time…_

And here was the loyal colonist again, walking back into Death’s path, taunting fate, and _she didn’t give a flying fuck_.

If he were to be completely honest, Duo was kinda impressed. She’d gotten over any residual awe of him as a Gundam pilot pretty quickly, striking a very doable living arrangement right on the spot. Granted, the bargain was struck under the watchful eye of Howard, but it was the two of them living it now, so old gramps and his cackling could shove it.

_Same line of business, my ass._

He remembered Uli’s stories about Valkyries. Hell, he’d played “Ride of the Valkyries” enough through Deathscythe’s speakers (heh) to know the whole horn section by heart.

Valkyries. Viking goddesses of war.

Valkyries were large armored women who rode off into battle and took the souls of only the bravest dead warriors to the Viking gods’ feasting hall, Valhalla. There the valiant dead ate and drank (massive afterlife party, hey!) until the end of the world, when they’d all fight gloriously at the big boss-god Odin All-Father’s side against the forces of destruction. Very heavy metal.

Apparently the Valkyries would be at the head of the charge at Ragnarok, too. Big badass bitches, really.

Now, Hilde… Hilde was even tinier than him, so “big” was out of the question. All the operatic warbling didn’t really fit into something that small.

She sure had no problem charging off into a fight though, and her game face was genuinely _scary--_ though if a mobile suit wasn’t armor, Duo was a gibbering idiot—and damned if she didn’t try to feed him every chance she got--

Huh.

He snickered and patted Deathscythe’s chest plate. “Well, Aibou, am I one of the valiant dead?”

The hangar echoed with the quiet of a mechanic lost in his thoughts, _not_ banging on waiting metal. It sounded… tolerant. Amused. Expecting him to get the joke eventually.

He traced arcs on the unpainted metal, trying to erase the colony-wide broadcast that had shredded his heart with a single blast to Gundanium armor. “I’d say you are, but you’re just resting until we get you back on your feet.”

_After all this suffering, have we earned a stay in Valhalla?_

A quick knock broke him out of his thoughts. “Hey, Duo! Remember that giant red turbine you got to work? Somebody wants to swap VS600 couplings for it! Woohoo!” Hilde did a little dance, stopping to stroke Deathscythe’s boot. “What do you say, Herrlich?”

It took Duo only a second to realize she was talking to the mech, not him.

“Want to fly again? I convinced him to throw in all the barrels of VS liquid silver for free, so you can go as crazy as you want!” She hugged the closest part of the big mech she could fling her arms around and zipped back to the hangar door, brimming over with enthusiasm. “Dinner’s in twenty minutes, Maxwell! Get cleaned up!”

Duo blinked.

He stared after her, attempting to process exactly what had happened down near Deathscythe’s foot… He started laughing uproariously.

“Holy shit! She’s feeding you, too!”

 

\-----


End file.
